4 ms·
One note to readers who may end up seeing discourse like this online: a (very simplified) critical race theoretic version of this goes as follows: 1. All race
by ThatGeoGuy 4y ago
One note to readers who may end up seeing discourse like this online: a (very simplified) critical race theoretic version of this goes as follows:
1. All race is a social (and to some degree, legal) construct. There is more variation in genes / ability / class within a single racial class than there are between racial classes.
2. The "white" race is even a social construct by this definition.
3. Society attributes certain attributes to "whiteness" or "blackness" or "coloured" as a result of its construct.
From there you may hear someone say "we should fight against whiteness" or some such, like a game of telephone. Typically the actual intent is to fight against the construct that certain values are "white" vs. other traits being ascribed to "person of colour." In short: the social construct of "whiteness" as an act of supremacy is the problem, not the colour of one's skin.
I'm not sure I have ever seriously heard the argument "white people are inherently morally guilty due to racism" but I can see how this starts to blend over time. People taking the above argument and misrepresenting or misunderstanding it could quickly devolve into a game of telephone. It's a sensitive topic so it's important to handle it with precision in our language.
But yeah, I'm not sure I've seen any serious "anti-racist" folks actually claim being white is a sin, so much as perpetuating the construct of "whiteness" as some kind of intrinsic value is the real sin. Of course, CRT is a graduate-level field that requires some degree of legal expertise, so you would have to go digging for the steelman version of the argument.